PREFACE 



WHEN this series was projected it seemed likely that 

 before its completion Newfoundland would have been 

 absorbed into the Dominion of Canada ; and in 1896 

 the second edition of Judge Prowse's well-known history 

 of Newfoundland assumed that this fate was imminent. 

 Had these forecasts been fulfilled this volume would 

 have been reduced to a size a little larger than that 

 which has been allotted to those chapters of the Fifth 

 Volume which deal with Nova Scotia. But New- 

 foundland has not been absorbed, and still remains sui 

 generis and an exception to the rule in the British 

 Empire ; therefore this book will also be an exception 

 to the other books in this series, and is framed on some- 

 what different lines and on a rather larger scale. 



I do not wish to suggest that the apartness of 

 Newfoundland will continue. Some people think that 

 the island of the United Kingdom which lies nearest 

 to America is destined to draw furthest away from its 

 European sister-realms, and that similarly the island 

 of America which lies nearest to Europe is destined to 

 draw furthest away from its sister Dominions on the 

 continent of America ; while other people think that 

 the centrifugal forces of to-day will be succeeded by the 

 cohesive forces of to-morrow, and that present tenden- 

 cies are due to passing whims. I do not think at all 

 about these things, but take facts as they are. The 



